China breaks ground on $24bn memory foundry
What's that surging down the Yangtze? It's a 3D NAND flash flood
China's Yangtze River Storage Technology (YMTC) has started building a 3D NAND flash plant.
YMTC, through its ownership of contract chip manufacturer XMC, has started building a memory semiconductor fab on a 13-hectare site at the Donghu New Technology Development Zone in Wuhan. Tsinghua Unigroup, which owns 51.04 per cent of YMTC, said the fab would soak up $24bn in investment. The other 48.96 per cent of YMTC is owned by China's National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, the Hubei IC Industry Investment Fund, and the Hubei Science and Technology Investment Group.
This will be the largest memory plant in China and include three 3D NAND production lines. Volume production should start in 2018, with a run rate of 300,000 12-inch wafers a month by 2020. News about the project arrived in April last year.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/03/3d_nand_flood_coming_down_the_yangtze/